@brain_grenade: Gee, what do you expect? The OP is upset. He sounds upset.

You know, Payless, I love you and can't live without you, but I'm a teensy, weensy bit bothered that you texted me without asking first. I really don't care about the money; you know we're not about that, but ould you please just think about it before you do it again? It would mean ever so much to me. Sorry to bug you! Hugs and kisses, Peter

@Easton21: What about the time spent calculating the true text rate? That's worth about another 75 cents or so.

@wvFrugan: Lol. Very nice.

@voogru: I actually tried that on a collect call once, but my dad didn't get it. I was in high school and I needed him to pick me up, so when it asked for the name I said "gameisovercomepickmeup" and he still accepted charges.

Silly old people.

But that's what I was thinking too when they said they charged per word. Either don't use spaces at all, or even/use/slashes/to/separate/the/words.

I would also argue that it's not lying if you change your mind. For him to be a liar he would mean he always planned to go back to a Payless even if they didn't fix their mistake. We have no reason to think that he wouldn't have avoided the store if they kept sending the text messages.

@H3ion: Wouldn't blatantly ignoring his request to have his number removed for a third time justify his "juvenile-ness" in the first place?

@Chris Walters: Hah! Truthful statement is truthful.

I would have refused the card and asked for a check in the mail.

I apologize if this comment is kinda bashing the OP, but if you tell a company you're not going to shop at their locations ever again, then accept a gift card for their store... kinda makes you look silly.

BTW, for anyone interested, do not get AT&T for prepaid since they charge a lot for prepaid service, both calls and texts. T-Mobile is much cheaper on both, however, there might be other even cheaper prepaid plans with other carriers (not Verizon though, last I checked). For the record, I pay at most $150/year for my cell phone usage. A contract plan is a minimum $400/year with any major carrier.

@ohenry: They would probably calculate the words by the characters seperated by spaces.

So, remove spaces, voila, now you only pay 5 cents per message!

bobwehadababyitsaboy

But they probably don't do it like that.

I also stand by my argument that he wasn't actually that rude. And seriously, it's okay to be rude about a corporation--they're not people. (He was blunt but never insulting to Katelin.)

I do agree with h3llc4t. A lot of these types of text are hardly spam. Spam suggests that it is unsolicited. He had a business relationship with Payless. Of course, with government regulations there needs to be a way to opt out of the service. Remember that these services are monitored by a computer program, if they don't get the expected text string to opt out, you won't be opted out.

It generally does say in the message "To stop receiving these texts, reply with STOP."

What's important to me about this story is that a consumer attempted to get reimbursed for being marketed to in a way he didn't explicitly approve of. And he was successful! The amount he asked for seemed pretty transparently arbitrary, but I don't think that detracts from the value of what he did.

I also think it's important because it shows us a company that's willing to treat each customer seriously when it comes to marketing and customer service--two things we are always railing against.

File a complaint: [www.fcc.gov]

I've updated the post with a follow-up from Peter where he admits he has no idea what text messaging costs, so everyone can stop abusing him for his wild guesstimates as of now, kthx.

Those of you who think he was too rude: he twice followed their instructions to opt-out of SMS marketing, and the process didn't work. He has every right to be annoyed that he has to take extra steps to get this to stop. He also has has every right to try to get some sort of compensation for his trouble.

If you think that his barely rude communications make him a "bad customer" then I pray to FSM that you don't work in customer service, because you don't have the ability to understand that sometimes customers are upset and/or emotional over something your company has done, and it's your job to put them right again. Clearly he was once a paying customer of Payless; they pissed him off, and by apologizing and making a token gesture of goodwill they got him to come back and shop again. That's how customer service is supposed to work. Companies don't get to dismiss their customer's complaints merely because he or she is upset at what has happened.

Hell, half of our commenters are ruder than this every day in our comment threads.

@nstonep: I've never gotten a spam message.

@h3llc4t has a slow work day: Yes! Spam is people!

I understand the initial complaint - receiving unsolicited texts, and I could have understood if he asked for actual monetary damages - I'm agreeing with most other comments that $.05 per word is unheard of. So, based off of my cell plan, for 3 text messages (2 incoming, 1 outgoing) that would total $.45 in reimbursement.

Kudos to Payless, though, for appearing to have a wonderful customer service department, though!

Never mind the cost of the SMS, how about Payless paying for his time? How much personal time did it take him to deal with their stupidity? Two hours?

I value my time dealing with companies at the same rate I get paid per hour. If they force me to take four hours of my personal time to get a problem resolved, I expect at least $100 in compensation or credit.

Of course, I rarely get that much, usually only what I was originally paying for, but if a company is costing me money through their errors, they should have to pay for it. They would certainly demand payment if the situation was reversed.

@brain_grenade:
Attitude...ATTITUDE? I'll show you fuckin' attitude mister!

Which is what more companies need to realize. Be courteous and generous to an unhappy customer, and it will keep a paying customer coming back and, well, paying!

I'm gonna have to call BS on that.

Plans usually charge on a per text basis. Each text is a max of 160 characters due to the implementation of technology. It costs the carrier the same whether 5 characters are sent or 160. Charging the customers 5 cents per word would be a GREAT profit, however, I don't think they'd have many customers.

I thought his first letter was juvenile and would have sent it straight to the shredder if I had received it.

Cupcake_ninja is dead right. He's going to have to spend something to use a $2.80 gift card. It would be interesting to see if there's a usage fee on the card.

I guess I'm relatively inexperienced in the cell plan world (I go with Cellcom, a local carrier in Wisconsin that is great overall), but I'm curious what sort of plan charges by the word for SMS messages? And how does it calculate a "word"?

That's really cool of Payless to do that though. I never actually had a Payless store in my area, they were just a part inside of Shopko.

and incoming should be free as well text 911 as well.